Question

i want to be a good developer citizen, pay my taxes, and disable things if we’re running over Remote Desktop, or running on battery.

If we’re running over remote desktop (or equivalently in a Terminal server session), we must disable animations and double-buffering. You can check this with:

/// <summary> /// Indicates if we're running in a remote desktop session. /// If we are, then you MUST disable animations and double buffering i.e. Pay your taxes! ///  /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static Boolean IsRemoteSession {     //This is just a friendly wrapper around the built-in way     get     {         return System.Windows.Forms.SystemInformation.TerminalServerSession;     } } 

Now i need to find out if the user is running on battery power. If they are, i don’t want to blow through their battery. i want to do things such as

• disable animations
• disable background spell-checking
• disable background printing
• turn off gradients
• use graphics.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.HighSpeed;
• use graphics.InterpolationMode = InterpolationMode.Low;
• use graphics.CompositingQuality = CompositingQuality.HighSpeed;
• minimize hard drive access – to avoid spin up
• minimize network access – to save WiFi power

Is there a managed way to see if the machine is currently running on battery?

Bonus Reading

• How do you convince developers to pay their ‘taxes’? (archive.is)
• Taxes: Remote Desktop Connection and painting (archive.is)
• GetSystemMetrics(SM_REMOTESESSION) (archive.is)

Answer 1

I believe you can check SystemInformation.PowerStatus to see if it’s on battery or not.

Boolean isRunningOnBattery =       (System.Windows.Forms.SystemInformation.PowerStatus.PowerLineStatus ==         PowerLineStatus.Offline); 

Edit: In addition to the above, there’s also a System.Windows.Forms.PowerStatus class. One of its methods is PowerLineStatus, which will equal PowerLineStatus.Online if it’s on AC Power.